DOES APRIL 9 TO MAY 6 COUNT AS "LONG RANGE PLANNING?

During the general election campaign, Kyle's principal purpose was to craft a sentence that had a noun, a verb and the word "Hydro" in it. All told, not a bad strategy. Somewhat dishonestly presented, but an effective political strategy. Peachy. That was his way of telling people not to vote for John Spring.

That, of course, left Moore needing some reason that people should vote for him, as opposed to against John Spring.  Somewhat artfully, his backup argument became, paraphrased, "John Spring is simply too old and has been in office too long to think long range or futuristically."  Kyle, on the other hand, presented himself as the second coming of Stephen Hawking, able to picture things as they will be in the future, invent flubber and replicate Fred Flintstone's DNA. It was simply a not very subtle age discrimination argument.  

The fundamental problem with making the "Stephen Hawking" argument is that it constitutes a promise to actually be that thinker who can project things out and play things out through their natural progressions.  Many of my friends are gleefully pointing out that there is nothing very futuristic about failing to grasp that it would be difficult to have the Council confirm a guy with a massive 941 tax problem. At least a week out, it should have been obvious to anyone not abusing intoxicants that Moore's team had best develop a B plan. While loyalty to your campaign aide may be laudable, stubbornness and the inability to look at alternatives is more than a few clicks short of Hawking. 

Similarly, thuggishly whacking a city engineer and Comptroller on either half-assed or no legal advice, again with no plan B, shows an inability to game things out to their natural conclusion. I completely understand that Kyle had to show the knuckle – draggers that he could be really politically tough and fire Dick Durbin's Chief of Staff's brother-in-law and the employee who wrote a letter to the editor taking issue with some of Kyle's own positions. I understand also that, after this rock started rolling down this hill, Team Kyle finally reached out (of town) to what they hoped were real lawyers and who perhaps knew something about personnel law (no doubt certified USDA Prime by Aaron Schock).  The trouble with outside legal advice is "garbage in, garbage out."    "Details" like when the City Engineer was actually appointed sort of matter.  That's usually the kind of thing that clients tell lawyers.  Of course, these phantom outside lawyers had no client because the City of Quincy hadn't hired them.  Imagine that!  A contract law issue!  

Ultimately, we come back to the confirmation of Kyle's  legal staff. His nominee for city attorney has no enemies, political or otherwise. His nominee for assistant Corporation counsel is universally recognized as one of the bright young professionals in town and actually comes from a Republican law firm. Still something about the three-person Slate was radioactive and it was obvious to anybody watching that it was going to be radioactive among Republicans. It did not take Carl Sagan to figure out that Slate was not going to get confirmed on opening night. Again, where is the futuristic thinking?  

But let's be balanced about this. Except for the indefensible Department Head firings, which will no doubt cost the city big money in the future, the rest of this is minor league "political junkie" material. No damage has  been done yet. No real payroll has been added to the lean profile that Kyle was left. The city can go a few weeks without a DAS. The legal Slate will probably be confirmed next week and that's at least 67% of a good thing. 

To be utterly fair to Kyle, we have learned that, in the short-term, is not very poised and not a very good judge of character. On the other hand we haven't learned much about how he will govern and where he wants to take the city.. It would be wrong to judge him on a truly comprehensive failure to be up and running on day one. He is not the first Mayor to have trouble getting his people in place and he will not be the last.  I, for one, will give him a pass on the startup thing. I'd rather watch the patently phony job creation thing and meter the crony factor. 

Clean slate for now. Gentleman, I would suggest you start your engines pretty damn quick.